Our Fundraising Standards

Martin House is a charity that is very much part of the communities we serve. We need in excess of £6 million each year to provide our services, which are provided at no charge to our families. The majority of this is funded by voluntary donations.

We strive to achieve the highest fundraising standards and we value our wonderful supporters. We expect our fundraising team to act honestly and with integrity at all times and ensure we remain compliant with all the laws and guidelines that govern us.

We want to inspire trust in our supporters and ensure that all supporters have an excellent experience when donating to Martin House.

We are staying up to date with developments in charity regulation, data protection and the new Fundraising Preference Service (FPS) to make sure we are legally compliant and adhering to all guidelines. Our fundraisers also follow the Institute of Fundraising’s Code of Practice.

Use and management of supporter data

We take our supporters’ data very seriously at Martin House and we collect and process data in accordance with the Data Protection Act 1998. When you make a donation to the hospice, we always give supporters the option of opting out of our mailing list and we allow them to choose how we can contact them. These preferences can be updated at any time.

We never sell our supporters’ details to any other charity or organisation.

We only share our supporters’ details when they are taking part in an event managed by another organisation, e.g. the Great North Run, or in order to send them our newsletter which is done by an external mailing house, and in all such cases we have our supporters’ explicit permission to do so. Any external groups acting our behalf have to sign an agreement confirming that they will process all our data properly and maintain confidentiality.

We take appropriate physical, electronic and managerial measures to ensure we keep your information secure, accurate and up to date and we only keep it as long as is reasonable and necessary.

If you use your credit or debit card to donate to us, purchase something or make an event booking online, we pass your card details securely to our payment processing partner as part of the payment process.

Our fundraising activities

We take our fundraising activities seriously and always ensure we comply with the law and Fundraising Codes of Practice. We are staying up to date with developments with the new Fundraising Regulator and we will ensure we comply with the Fundraising Preference Service (FPS) when it is launched.

Our reputation here at Martin House is very important to us and therefore we do not use external professional fundraising agencies to engage in door to door fundraising or telephone fundraising.

Refusing donations

We abide by the law which requires us, in deciding whether to accept or refuse a donation, to consider which action is in the charity's best overall interest. We will not, however, accept donations made by donors whose activities appear to be in direct conflict with the best interests of Martin House.

We will not undertake business with companies or individuals who participate in activities which could cause detriment to the charity's reputation; which will disproportionately decrease the amount of donations to further the work of the charity.

Comments, compliments and complaints

We work hard to ensure that we deliver a high quality service to our supporters but we may not always get it right. If this happens, we would like to hear about it as soon as possible so we can resolve the problem. If, after this, a supporter feels as though the issue has not been resolved then they may make a complaint.